Daniel Noree’s OpenRC F1 Car is one of Pinshape’s most popular models so we had to make one for ourselves. Most of the builds of Daniel Noree’s car have used FDM with common thermoplastics like PLA and ABS for the major components and TPE/TPU for the wheels. We wanted to give it a go using the Formlabs Form 2 and new engineering materials like Formlabs Tough and Flexible Resins. Follow along to learn how to build your own and avoid some of our mistakes along the way.

Assembly

Start by assembling the rear axle and front steering assembly. You’ll need both of these fully assembled for later steps

Create the main body assembly

Attach the rear axle assembly and front steering assembly to the bottom of your car

Wire up your electronics (we grabbed an engineer for this part)

Attach your motor to the car and align the motor gear and back axle gear

Screw the top frame to your car

Add the wheels and rear spoiler

Do some burnouts!

Mistakes along the way

If you’re anywhere near as clumsy as we are, your RC car will be both dropped and crashed with impressive frequency. We initially made many of the components in Standard Resin which are great for aesthetic and some functional applications but have relatively low impact resistance. After needing to re-print a few parts, we learned our lesson and made vital components in Formlabs Tough Resin which has is comparable to ABS plastic in terms of impact strength.

You’ll want to resist the urge to super-glue parts together. If something seems to be fitting incorrectly, chances are something’s gone wrong with the assembly. In each case that we super-glued poorly fitting parts together, we eventually learned that we’d been assembling the part the wrong way. Trying to separate parts that are super-glued together isn’t as enjoyable as you might think.

He’s also just released new, updated files for the OpenRC F1 car. These are meant to serve as upgrades for many of the major body components and will give your RC car an aesthetic lift. Our build was done using all of the original files so we’re excited to see your version using the updates!